


look at your face like you're killed in a dream

by hidefromeveryone



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Depression, Hurt No Comfort, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Overdosing, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 21:45:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13936053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hidefromeveryone/pseuds/hidefromeveryone
Summary: Lance doesn't know how many times he's found Keith like this, with a blade in one hand and his thigh in the other.





	look at your face like you're killed in a dream

**Author's Note:**

> i know it's ~so~ unlike me to self-project onto that things that i love.

Lance doesn't know how many times he's found Keith like this, with a blade in one hand and his thigh in the other. 

Well, sometimes it's not a thigh. It can be a shoulder, or an ankle, or a wrist, or the crook of his elbow. Other times it's his forearm, his knees, his stomach. Lance is fairly certain the only place Keith hasn't brought the blade down on is his face. 

Wait - there was the one time, when he took a box cutter and cut a pimple open on his cheek. It didn't scar, but he had stood in the bathroom staring into nothing until Lance had taken the blade out of his hand. 

That was another story - his blades. 

There were razor blades (large, bought in packages, and small, broken out of disposable plastic), hunting knives, kitchen knives, box cutters, scissors, the blade connected to Keith's past that he's never found without. 

Sometimes candles and lighters were their own form of destruction, alongside fingers down his throat and days without food. 

Lance knows that he will never fully understand this, not really. He'd be lying if he said he hadn't felt the urges himself, the overwhelming need to die or feel something or punish himself. 

But, he never had. 

Keith had. Too much, and too often. 

It was a bath that took an hour, leaving stains on the side of the tub from the bloody water. It was showers with rusted blades. It was scissors left on the table from a craft project. It was a burning candle. It was a late-night panic attack and a nearby weapon. 

It was overdoses and whispers that it was alright. 

Which is why, when Lance found out that Keith had almost killed himself again, sending his ship towards the shield, he found him and pulled him in tight. 

To remember his smell, of sweat and blood and tears and gasoline. To remember the annoyed look in his eyes, the purple burning with anger. To remember the feeling of his chest rising and falling against his own, the shake in Keith's hands when he bunches the fabric of Lance's suit in his fists. 

The way that Keith has never said "I love you," even though they both knew it was true. 

Lance knew it was all because of the past, because of people that had abused and broken and abandoned a boy too young to understand what any of it meant. It was because, no matter how strong he pretended to be, Keith was never alright and was always waiting for someone else to kill him. 

Someone else killing him would mean that he wouldn't have to take his own life, that whatever people remained that remembered him would have an easier time living. 

Even know, Keith knew that he could never truly move past any of it. It was seen in his flinches when anyone touched him, the panic attacks when someone grew angry, the blood spilling onto a cloth towel in the morning when all he needed was to know was that he was capable of bleeding. It was the drugs that clouded his senses more than his dissociation ever could, the flashbacks when walking down the street and a raindrop falls, the inherent mistrust he held towards everyone and everything because if - 

If Keith heard another person promise him they wouldn't leave, he'd scream. 

Which is why Lance didn't pretend to understand what he was going through. Not fully, anyways. It was why all Lance could do was place food in front of him, warm arms around him late at night, and bandage his wounds whenever they were caught. 

It's why Lance realized that no matter how much he loved the man in front of him, he couldn't fix this. He couldn't fix something Keith couldn't fix himself. He could love him, and care for him, and try to keep him alive with every fiber of his being, but he couldn't control the fact that Keith's mind shattered in the past and fractured the remaining pieces each and every day. 

It hurt, knowing that Keith wasn't in the castle anymore. When he was there, Lance had a certain sense of comfort, knowing if anything went wrong they could help him. 

With Keith gone, all he could do was stare at the stars and wait for him to return or fade away. Lance figured that Keith's star would fade before he heard the news. 

After all, his own star had faded long ago and no one had reported his death yet. Except he wasn't dead, just high and bleeding beneath his jacket sleeves. 

Keith was right about some aspect of all this, after all. 

When you can't focus on anything but the slowing of your heartbeat and the dull throb of an open wound, it becomes impossible to focus on the plagues the mind conjures up. 

Keith doesn't know how many times he's come back to the castle to find Lance like this, a pill bottle in one hand and the other over his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: @hidefromeveryone
> 
> work title taken from: "dramamine" by modest mouse.


End file.
